Thursday, March 25, 2010

These were totally inspired by Montessori For Everyone, they truly have some fabulous stuff. I had to make my own though as I needed them to be as compact as possible.

In an endeavour to have as much on our shelves as possible I need to utilise things that are compact. Where possible I can store items in Index Card Holders and thought that I could include several theme related cards in the one Index Card Holder.

So these cards fit inside a 3 x 5 Index Card Holder perfectly. Since we looking more closely at plants at the moment these are out on display, but once we move on they will have a rubber band around them and will go into the "Story Writing Box" along with any other theme story writing cards I put together along the way. When inspiration strikes the kids can simply go to the Story Writing Box and pull out some theme related cards to help them along.

We've had fun with them this week. We began by writing a 3 way story, each choosing a card and taking turns. We turned the cards over so we didn't know what we were going to get. Having a simple picture to look at helps plant the idea (we just need to work on the fact that it doesn't always have to be so literal) and we can then focus on character building, following the story and listening to what the person prior had added to make sure that the new sentence flows with the storyline, and trying to build in an ending (that part was tricky).

Eventually I'd like the kids to use these independently to work on their stories but for now it will be with me or each other.

Sorry about the photo's below they are pretty awful. As we chose a card we placed it on the table so we could back and read our story along the way. The below layout is B's.

His story (written with me) is as follows:

M: In the pretty pink flower bed lived a

B: little man watering his flowers.

M: He grew enormous pumpkins in his garden.

B: And he grew some grapes too.

M: The little man spent a lot of his time raking leaves. One day,

B: he saw a little lady beetle.

M: She helped him to mow his lawn. The lady beetle was a very good gardener.

B: When the little man had finished raking he planted some flowers.

M: The flower sprouted on the other side of the big stone bridge.

B: Next to the flower was a little girl on a slide.

M: She also loved gardening very much.

B: She had a little friend too, a little bee.

M: The little bee was busy chatting to her cousin the butterfly.

B: All of them decided to go over the big red bridge back home for dinner.

The following is K's.

Her story is as follows:

M: Susan was feeling very hot mowing the lawn.

K: Whilst she was mowing the grass she walked past her friend called Bumble Bee.

M: Bumble Bee was busy raking his area of the garden.

K: When Susan was finished mowing the grass she walked to her friend, to say hello, called Matar.

M: Matar was using her favourite watering can to give her flowers a drink.

K: When she finished watering the flowers she went over the bridge and she saw

M: Harry, her dad, pushing his wheelbarrow full of leaves.

K: And then she saw some pumpkins that her dad grew.

M: Matar decided to stay awhile and help her dad trim the pumpkin vines.

K: On her way back from the bridge she saw some beautiful flowers and thought she was

M: very lucky to see a butterfly fluttering near the flowers.

K: On her way home she saw a little girl playing in a slide.

M: Matar thought about stopping and playing awhile but she could hear her mum calling her from the other side of the red bridge.

K: When she was walking over the bridge she saw some grapes growing on a vince.

M: She wished she had time for a swing, but she knew she had to get inside for tea.

I've uploaded these so you can grab a copy for yourself if you like. The file includes two versions, one set of cards with just the pictures and another with a word or simple phrase.